A two-to-one vote last week to restrict data centers in a Milwaukee suburb may be a harbinger of future regulations as communities across the U.S. push back against data centers and local leaders scramble to figure out how much authority they have to respond. With more than 4,000 data centers already operating and 3,000 more planned or under construction, state and local governments are facing mounting public pressure to assert control over where and how this infrastructure gets built. But experts say cities don’t always have the legal authority to act, and blunt tools like moratoriums and referendums may create as many problems as they resolve. Last week, three significant actions signaled how quickly the political landscape around data centers is shifting. Voters in Port Washington, Wisconsin, overwhelmingly approved the first-of-its-kind referendum requiring city leaders to get voter approval before awarding tax incentives for projects over $10 million, including data centers. In Maine, the state legislature approved the nation’s first statewide moratorium on data center construction. And last Thursday, a bipartisan coalition of governors called on grid operator PJM Interconnection to require data centers to cover the full costs they impose on the grid. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors in Prince William County, Virginia, voted to end a legal battle with a residents’ group over bringing a data center hub to the area. Following the decision, Mac Haddow, president of the Oak Valley Homeowners Association, said in a statement released to local media that residents would have suffered “from the unchecked and predatory expansion efforts of a multi-billion-dollar global data center industry," Communities raise their voices “Clearly, the public has turned against data centers as the environmental costs and impacts of them become better understood,” Sheila Foster, a Columbia Climate School professor, said in an email. The Port Washington